


long winter

by too_much_in_the_sun



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: M/M, a slight AU where Clerval is like HEY QUIT THAT to Victor, that was the only tag that fit him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3924196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_in_the_sun/pseuds/too_much_in_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"You owe him what every parent owes their child."</em>
</p>
<p>  <em>"What is that?"</em></p>
<p>  <em>"Your love, Victor."</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>aka I cannot get enough of Clerval rolling his eyes at Victor's drama and making him be a parent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	long winter

Victor has made to write his memoirs, but I should like to record my own side of the story before it is too late, and too much is forgotten. Some of Victor's journals from the crucial days have nearly been burned on multiple occasions, sometimes set to flame by the hand of the scientist himself, and it has generally been my hand that put out the fire, often over Victor's protests.

I imagine you think you know our story already. You are aware of some, but not all of what happened -- it is true that a talented young writer named Mary S---- did publish a record of _part_ of Victor's life, but it is also true that she embellished many of the details, and, under our encouragement, fabricated the second half entirely. It does not behoove us at this point in our lives to be public figures. We wish, the both of us, nothing more than quiet lives, as free of excitement as possible.

To that end I will not tell you what we are doing now, in specific. Many of the major players whose names you would recognize from the novel are still living, and we are in contact with several of them. Victor and I lead a comfortable existence in a large European city, two aging bachelors in one overlarge house. We live under assumed names, as neither of us have any wish to be tracked down and accosted by readers of Mrs. S----'s novel, no matter how remote the possibility is.

Victor has taken in several stray cats, which always seem to perch on my desk at the most inopportune of moments -- it seems he has acquired a taste, over the years, for caring for small animals. I do not mind. Even when they knock over my inkwell and tread in the puddle before tracking it through all my papers, forcing me to recopy a day's work --

I digress.

If you are aware of Mrs. S----'s novel, then you are aware of the particulars of much of the story of Victor Frankenstein. She interviewed my friend several times to ensure she had his tale exactly right, and her company on these occasions was so pleasant that we have continued to invite her back to call on us. Mrs. S---- is quite understanding of our inability to return her calls in the conventional way.

In these interviews, Mrs. S---- recorded Victor's version of his life almost verbatim, before editing and fabricating as necessary. Most of what she later published is completely true, or false only by omission. Therefore I need not tell you of his childhood, or how he came to university; I may begin with my own arrival in Ingolstadt.

I had the good fortune to encounter my friend at just the moment I disembarked from the coach. I greeted him, we proceeded to his rooms, we talked, he grew increasingly hysterical and fainted.

I must tell you that Victor gave me very little credit in his retelling of events, and would have had me take an astonishingly long time to notice the poor state of my dearest friend's health.

Perhaps it seemed that way to him. To save his pride, I have not asked him whether he really thinks me that oblivious. We must have some secrets.

In all honesty, the moment I saw him on the pavement, I intuited something was wrong. His hair was unbrushed, dark curls falling wildly about his face, and he was pale with long hours in his study. This was typical of Victor.

But the dark circles beneath his eyes _did_ worry me at once, and when I shook his hand, I nearly cried out in shock at feeling how thin his fingers had become. It was only on remembering how much my friend hated discussion of his health that I kept myself from exclaiming on his condition in the middle of the street, and it was with gratitude I observed him bid the servant bring us breakfast on our arrival at his rooms. Victor has, in all the time I have known him, ever held a distate for the necessity of nourishing his physical form, and to see him remember to call for food, I thought, bode well.

As you know, however, I was quite wrong, and when I tried to ask him what on earth was the matter, he exclaimed wildly and fell back (thankfully, into a chair) in a swoon.

I admit I was rather overwrought myself, and was frozen in terror for a moment. I had observed at once that Victor was in ill health, but I had not thought him so badly shaken. And who was the figure he feared was pursuing him?

I loosed his cravat and unbuttoned his collar. Dashing water gently in his face, I called his name until his eyelids began to flutter and he came awake. He was not awake for long -- whatever had happened to him had badly shattered his nerves -- but it was long enough for me to help him to his bed, ensure that he undressed, and pull the blankets up to his chin. He sank into a muttering, hazy state, and I sat by his bedside for some time, his thin hand clutched in mine.

When I was sure he had fallen asleep, I went in search of answers.

I kept this part of the story from him for many years, out of respect for his pride. Victor despises having other people in his workspaces, whether it is his laboratory or his study. He permits visitors only at his discretion.

But my friend was ill, mysteriously affected by some unknown agent or occurrence, and I had to know what had befallen him.

Victor spent much of the first week of his illness either asleep or lying listlessly in bed, which left me quite enough time to turn his rooms over in search of some clue or clues. After that I continued on to the other rooms which he rented, searching them all as thoroughly as I could manage in the intervals of ministering to him.

It was in the attic room he used as his laboratory that I found the crucial key which prevented unknown amounts of suffering to us all.

I let Victor imagine for a long time that I knew nothing of his experiments in restoring life until he himself told me. I was no fool. Traces of his investigations lay scattered through his apartments, but what I found in that attic laboratory that day, though I did not know it at the time, was the key evidence of what had consumed his attention in the time we had been apart.

I remember that day clearly, as if it were yesterday rather than decades ago. I had finished searching Victor's study the day before, and that left me only his laboratory to search. I ensured that my friend took part of a bowl of soup and some tea before returning to sleep, and set off up the stairs.

As I ascended the last steps to the little garret, I became aware of noise within. No one could have come in there without passing by me in Victor's rooms below, and so I dismissed it at first as the wind rattling at the pane.

When I entered, I was immediately disabused of this notion, for I saw at once that the noise I heard was quiet weeping, like a child's, coming from a figure huddled in a corner below an open window. It was a grey, overcast day outside, and snowflakes drifted in, settling on the figure's great, ratty coat. Of the stranger himself I could only see his long, black hair and his pale hands.

Had I taken any other course of action, I do not doubt things might have gone very poorly for Victor and I. Mrs. S---- has chronicled very ably and with much imagination one possible course of events.

Rather than flee, I was overcome by my instinct to give help to the helpless. I knew not how this poor creature had come into Victor's garret, but I could hear his weeping, and I understood at once that some terrible thing must have befallen him to force him to take refuge here. I approached him slowly, my hands outstretched in entreaty, and as I passed the window, saw a line of tracks extending away over the rooftops. Immediately the visitor's line of thought became obvious, in part. He had wandered, cold and alone, over the rooftops, and, seeing a window left open, had taken refuge within.

Perhaps it was the fact that I had so recently come from my sick friend's side that prompted my immediate extension of the hand of aid to the stranger. Victor has always said that I am too sentimental by far, and that my willingness to give succor to all and sundry is my sole character flaw. I cannot say which is really true.

I knelt beside our strange visitor and called to him in a gentle tone of voice.

"Sir -- good sir --" I entreated, as his sobbing continued. He did not respond to me and so I put out one hand to touch his shoulder.

He recoiled from me in fear, and, startled, I flinched back as well, falling to the floor with a loud thump. We regarded each other in silence for a moment. I cannot say what he thought of me in that moment -- it is his to tell, should he ever choose to -- but I remember what I thought of him.

_Poor devil_ ! I recall thinking, _what can have happened to him_? I observed his features with a feeling of familiarity -- his sallow skin recalled to me Victor's fair complexion, his hair Victor's unwashed locks, and his eyes, though fearful, bore the same gleam of intelligence as did those of my dear friend.

"It's all right," I said, remembering the many times in the past days I had had to comfort Victor after the nightmares from which he woke shaking and screaming. "I won't hurt you." I stretched out an open hand to him. "It's all right," I repeated. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

He looked back at me, disbelieving, and my heart twisted with sympathy for the poor fellow. I had seen the same look of fear and disbelief on dear Victor's face more than once since I had become his nurse, when I held him in my arms after his fearful dreams and tried to rock him back to sleep.

Our visitor's face was beginning to purple with bruises, I saw, as if he had been driven from some place by a hail of stones. His dress was meager, old and plain, barely sufficing to cover his limbs.

I determined at once that it was my duty to return this stranger to health. I thought merely that I sat on the floor opposite another human being, whom life had placed in cruel circumstances, and whom I could help regain his way again.

I installed our guest in Victor's sole guestroom without thinking where I myself would sleep that night, and saw to it that the stranger was able to bathe and to dine. I established that he could not or would not speak, but could make hand signs to indicate to me what he wanted. This was perfectly fine for me. He would speak in his own time, and then I might ask him where he had come from and how he had found himself in Victor's laboratory.

After our guest had sat down to his dinner, I returned to Victor's garret laboratory, where my first order of business was to close the open window. On his writing desk there, I found the journals which I have spoken of earlier, and carried them downstairs with me to read. I thought, if I knew Victor, that these books would contain an explanation of what he had been investigating in the time since last I saw him, and that I might divine from them what had brought him to this miserable pass.

I read until late into that night, and only put down my reading when I found myself nearly dozing before the fire. As yet I could not find any possible cause recorded for what had befallen my friend, but neither could I continue reading that night. I was forced to retire to bed.

There I found myself in a predicament. In my absorption, I had forgotten that I had put our visitor to bed in the only guestroom. I sighed, and proceeded on to Victor's room.

When I pushed open the door he was awake, though I could only barely discern so. The moon shone on him from the window, and his small hands were folded atop the coverlet.

He heard the creak of the hinge and turned his head to see who it was. On seeing a form in the doorway, he immediately tensed with fear -- and then, seeing it was I, relaxed. The change was there and gone so fast I hardly believed I had seen it. Yet, remembering it later, I saw its significance at once.

"My dear Clerval," he said softly. I remember he looked very small to me, lying alone in bed that night, as if he were a sick child. "I haven't been well, have I?"

"No," I told him, as gently as I could. "I'm afraid I've got to bunk with you tonight. Someone else is in the guestroom tonight, and I forgot that left me nowhere else to sleep."

He looked at me for a moment, and the moonlight shining at his back made his eyes look very dark. "All right," he said. He rolled onto his side, putting his back to me.

I undressed for bed quickly, shedding my clothing with weary hands and pulling one of Victor's nightshirts over my head. I had shared a bed with Victor before, when we had traveled together, and I crawled between the sheets thinking only of getting a good night's rest.

The sheets were still warm where Victor had been lying, and I was beginning to drift off when he spoke again, his voice hushed in the dark.

"Clerval? Are you awake?"

I opened my eyes, blinking up into the dimness. "Victor?"

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "but would you mind moving closer to me?" He sounded apologetic. "I... I find it comforts me, to have you near."

"Of course." I was encouraged by his asking. I had felt his relaxation at my touch after his nightmares before, but he had not asked for my help in words. Perhaps it meant he was improving. I moved closer to him until I felt the warmth of his body against mine, his narrow shoulders nestled against my collarbones, his slim hips against my thighs. "Is that better?"

"Yes, thank you," he said. His heart was beating quickly, but as I lay there next to him I felt it already begin to slow into a peaceful, sleepy rhythm. I was relieved; it wounded me greatly to see my good friend in so dismal a condition, jumping at shadows.

I felt, more than heard, him sigh, and he put up his hand behind his head to tousle my hair. "Dear Clerval," he said, "I am afraid I would be quite lost without you. I can't tell you how thankful I am that you are here with me."

I put my arm around him, resting my head on the other, and embraced him. "My dear friend, there is no need to thank me," I reassured him, whispering into his ear. "You have been ill. You must rest. I am happy to do whatever is necessary to ensure your return to health."

"Well, thank you anyway," he said, already beginning to fall asleep under the calming influence of my touch. He yawned. "My dear Henry," he said, in a voice hardly audible even as I lay next to him, "I must confess I have been keeping secrets from you."

He fell asleep before he could confess any further, but in the end it did not matter; in the morning I discovered the great secret he had hidden from me, and after that all became clear between us.

I rose late in the morning. The weather had turned in the night, and it was with the greatest reluctance that I pried myself from the warmth of Victor's bed. He was not yet awake as I began to dress for the day, and I searched his sleeping face anxiously for any sign that his health might be improving.

After I had taken breakfast, and finding Victor and our odd visitor both still asleep, I retired to Victor's study, where I had left his journals on leaving off the night before. Now, I thought, I should discover what line of investigation had so destroyed his natural good spirits.

I had left off reading the previous night at a passage where Victor described an experiment he had undertaken in late October of the previous year. I understood it little, and I confess I felt myself grow slightly drowsy again as I reread the words.

The next entry was dated that November, almost exactly a year before, and it drew my attention immediately if only because the handwriting had changed. Victor's usual script was controlled and even; this was shaky and wild, and looked almost as if written by another hand.

_I have discovered,_ he had written, _the secret of life and death._

I read on eagerly, and with mounting horror discovered the plan which he had set upon: to prove that he truly possessed the secret of bestowing life on the lifeless, he had set himself to the creation of a human being. More, I read his records of just how he had done it, of his months of procuring the materials, and, that past February, of beginning the construction process.

I was both shocked and saddened by what I read in my friend's notes. The activities he described were gruesome, and yet I understood he had only pursued them in seeking to banish death and disease from the world. What shocked me most was the feverish pace he had driven himself to. I knew that Victor at times immersed himself deeply in his quests for knowledge, but he had driven himself hard indeed in the process of proving the truth of his discovery. No wonder he had sunk into a faint! I wondered only that he had not collapsed earlier.

It is difficult to explain why exactly I was saddened by what I read. In the last entry, dated the morning of my arrival, Victor recorded in shaky, childish printing that he had succeeding in giving life to the being he had constructed over nine months' toil. Of what had happened after he gave his creation life, he wrote thus:

_Awoke to find It is gone._

_I cannot stay here another moment._

I had known Victor since we were children together, and in all our years of friendship, the subject of his marriage to Elizabeth had been, if not a forbidden one, then one he rarely wished to broach. He thought of it as a foregone conclusion. Just before his going away to Ingolstadt, he had told me what his mother had said when Elizabeth first came into their home -- that she was to be his.

"I think she meant," he had said, with a soft, ghoulish smile, "that _I_ was to be _hers_."

I was struck by his strange expression as he spoke. Whenever we touched on the topic of his marrying Elizabeth, Victor looked like a man discussing his own funeral.

I will not say that he did not love Elizabeth. But after his mother's death, he seemed to have resigned himself to marrying her in a way he never had before. His mother had died blessing the union of Victor and Elizabeth, and Victor had taken those words to heart.

In his letters to me from Ingolstadt, he had alluded to fearing that he could not be a husband to Elizabeth, could not love her as a husband ought to love his wife. He thought of her always as a sister. I never knew him to think of their marriage -- which to him was a preordained fact -- as more than simple fate. He never considered that he could break their engagement at any time, and that Elizabeth would have understood.

I think, perhaps, the reason he had not broken their engagement was that Victor dearly wanted to be a father. He had often expressed the desire to bring up his future children with Elizabeth in the latest, most compassionate way -- he was a follower of Rousseau's teachings from the moment he read of them. This was the only time I heard him discuss his marriage with an air of excitement. To Victor the promise of being able to form a young mind, to guide its growth, more than balanced out the threat of being married to a woman he could never see as his wife.

I sat in thought until I heard the creak of Victor's door opening. I looked up to see him standing unsteadily in the doorway, one slim hand grasping the molding. His eyes were deeply shadowed, and his hair fell loosely about his shoulders, but he had dressed himself fully, and after a week of seeing him either in his dressing gown or nightshirt, it was a pleasant surprise.

"Good morning, Clerval," he said softly. He glanced over the scattering of books before me. "I see you've been reading."

"I have," I said, waiting to see if he had noticed that what I had been reading was his own notes.

"You mentioned we had a visitor, last night." He brushed his hair back from his brow with one hand.

"Yes -- I'm afraid he's still in his room."

"I ought to greet him," Victor said vaguely.

"If you think it best." 

"I think it best." He smiled at me before turning to walk down the hall, and I returned to my contemplation.

I was shaken from my thoughts some moments later by Victor's sudden return. I looked up in alarm at the sound of his rapid footsteps, and was shocked to see the grey tone of his face, the expression of horror. He sank onto the sofa next to me.

"Oh, Clerval, what have you done?" he said mournfully. His hands trembled as he folded them in his lap.

"What is the matter?" I asked, trying to think of what could have shaken him so badly.

" _I_ _t_ is in the house." He clasped his hands tightly to mask their shaking. "I... I thought it had died out there in the cold."

I put one hand on his shoulder to comfort him. "Victor, you're not making sense. _What_ is in the house?"

He glanced away from me, seeing the books strewn about. "I see you've read my notes," he said.

"Yes, I have," I said.

"Then you know what I was attempting to do." He shivered. "What I was attempting to create. _That_ is what is in the house."

I began to understand his meaning. "What -- the visitor asleep in your guestroom? Him?"

" _Yes,_ " said Victor, wringing his hands nervously.

I had to smile. I had read Victor's description of his creation and been stunned -- he had called it miserable, deformed, wretched, had written that it suffered from massive birth defects. This could hardly describe the poor creature that I had given shelter the previous day. Scarred though his countenance was, he was more pitiful than horrible by any description. "Of course I let him downstairs, it was freezing cold up there."

"Clerval, you don't understand," Victor said. "You have to kill it. It shouldn't be alive. I ought to have smothered it on the table. I -- I can't kill it now, I haven't the strength. But you _can_. Please, Clerval."

Victor had gotten exactly what he always wanted, I realized. He had proven his theories by restoring life to dead tissue. I had seen the results myself -- it, _he_ , was in the guest room down the hall. The previous day, I had noted the strange scars which marked our visitor's features, the neat lines of stitching that ran through his flesh, the odd, grey look of his skin. The coat he wore, too, was familiar -- it was Victor's coat.

Victor had created the child he had always wanted.

Did he realize it?

"Victor, listen to me." I gripped his upper arm firmly so that he could not twist away from me. "He is your _son._ "

"No, it is not." His voice was soft and wistful. "It is only a failed experiment. You should never have let it stay here."

"My God, can you not hear yourself speaking? How many times have you told me you wanted nothing more in the world than to pass your knowledge on to a child? Well, now you have got one, and you wish nothing more than to abandon him."

"It isn't a _child_ , Clerval," he said, and his eyes looked distant and doll-like without emotion. "It's... it's an assemblage of corpses that I gave life to. And I shouldn't have. My God, I should have destroyed it before giving it life."

"Have you no sense of decency?" I shook him, gently; his eyes had begun to wander from my face, to grow more blank. "It does not matter how he came to be. What matters is that he is alive, and you owe him a debt. He has no other parent than you. You cannot abandon him! How is he to make his way in the world if not by your guidance?"

Victor shook his head. He did not speak.

"Victor, _please_ , listen to me." I fumbled for words, trying to reach him, to urge him to do what was right. "I read your notes -- no, we'll talk later -- I've read your notes, and I know that you were attempting to restore life to what had been dead, to prove you could conquer death. Well, you have half-succeeded. Your son is alive; he eats, he draws breath. Yet do we not also have a life of the mind? You have stopped before your experiment has finished. How can you know you have truly restored life without assessing the capabilities of the spirit?"

A glimmer of interest came back into Victor's eyes. He put up one hand, feebly, and touched my cheek for a moment. His fingers were cool.

"My dear Clerval," he said, "I do not deserve a friend such as you. I fear I may have been... rash in my judgment of the situation."

He stopped for a moment, and I saw my eloquent friend searching for words.

"You may not believe me," he said, "but in truth I had not thought of what kind of _mind_ I might have given life. I saw only that I had restored the vitality of a body."

Victor's hair had begun to fall forward before his eyes, and I gently pushed it back, cradling his head in my hand.

"Dear Victor," I said, "you are correct. You have created a new life. And as his creator, you owe him a debt. Have you not said that you owe your current happiness to the guidance of your own parents when you were a child? You owe your son the same affection."

Victor sighed and tilted his head to one side, leaning into my palm like a cat being petted. "I think I begin to come round to your way of thinking," he said, sounding very tired. "But what debt do I owe him? I gave him nine months of my life slaving in the laboratory. By all rights he is the one who owes me a debt."

"My dear," I said, "you owe him what every parent owes their child."

"What is that?"

"Your love, Victor."

"I don't know that I can give him that," he said hollowly. "I can hardly look at him."

"Good Lord," I said, "you spent two years in graveyards and charnel-houses and you cannot bear the sight of your own son? You are much changed, my friend."

He jerked away from me, and drew his knees to his chest, curling in on himself. "He frightens me," he whispered, as if afraid our guest could hear him.

"Frightens you?" I remembered the pitiful creature I had met in the garret the day before, his gentle, sorrowful gaze. "Why on earth are you frightened of _him_? I dare say he looks a good deal less terrible than you do, my dear -- you wax irrational, you must rest."

Victor spoke in a weak, tremulous murmur. The wind had begun to whistle round the eaves, and I had to strain to hear him. "After -- after he was born, I became weak; I had to sleep. He came to my room. He sought me out, reached for me. He -- I think he tried to say something but I couldn’t make it out. I was afraid. I ran..."

"Oh, Victor." I extended my hand once more to touch him, and began to run my fingers through his hair, grown long from neglect. "Have you never seen a frightened child call for its mother, or cling to her skirts? That is all that he wanted, for you to give him comfort."

We sat in silence for some time. At length Victor began to tremble so that I feared he was on the verge of another nervous collapse before I realized that he had, in fact, begun to weep quietly, his thin shoulders quivering with the strength of his emotion.

"Oh, my dear Henry," he said, as tears ran down his face, "what have I done?"

I moved closer to him on the sofa and slipped an arm around his shoulders. He shuddered with a sob, lowered his knees, and both moved closer to me and leaned against me so that he was almost in my lap. I embraced him more fully and, tentatively, he put his arms around me as well.

Victor's tears dampened my shirt, and his small frame shook in my arms as he sobbed. I stroked his back and ran my fingers gently through his hair. It disturbed me to see my dear friend so distraught, and I wished that it were possible to see him through this bout of crying and conduct him to bed for a period of rest, to concern myself only with his recovery.

Yet I knew that my responsibilities were not to him only; Victor was so weak, and his condition so slow to improve, that I would have to act as a parent to his son alongside him, in order that the burden on Victor not be too great. I was not over-enthused by the prospect of assuming the role of father so early in my life -- I was not yet three and twenty, and Victor was only nineteen -- but I felt that, so long as Victor were at my side acting as my partner, I could manage well enough.

Eventually his tears subsided, and Victor hiccupped a few times, his head still pressed to my chest. He breathed deeply, and I continued to stroke his back. Through the thin fabric of his shirt I could feel the small prominences of each rib, and the long line of his spine seemed very sharp under my palm. Victor never actually refused my offerings of food, but he ate very little, and I knew from his journals that he had often gone days at a time without eating. His excessive thinness worried me, and it certainly wasn't aiding his recovery.

Victor sniffled, choked back another sob, and began to disentangle himself from my embrace. I let him, though considering the slowness with which he removed his arms from around me, I think he wanted to remain there for some time more. As it was, he sat next to me for some moments, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

I was thinking of how best to proceed.

Victor is stubborn to a fault. Once set in his ways, he continues in them until forcibly dislodged. I had made him realize for a brief moment that his son was more than just the end result of his experiments, was as a matter of fact his child. Yet I needed still to convince him that it was necessary for him to act as a parent to his son, and I thought I might know how to do that. Victor pretends he is a creature of the intellect, but in actual fact he is ruled far more by his emotions than he lets on.

Victor scrubbed at his eyes once more, then stuffed his handkerchief into his trouser pocket. "Thank you, Henry," he said stiffly. "I think I should like to go back to bed now."

He made to rise, and I laid my hand on his to stop him.

"No, Victor," I said. "You have something yet to do before you may rest again. You ought to apologize to your son for your behavior towards him."

He looked very pale and rather dizzy, and I squeezed his hand to reassure him. "We'll go to see him together," I said.

"All right," said Victor. His voice was weak and rough with crying, and as we stood up together he wavered on his feet. "Lead the way, my dear."

I clasped his hand in mine as we made our way down the hall, only letting go as we came to the door of the guest room, and by all appearances Victor appreciated the contact. For all he claims to be a solitary being by nature, Victor quite enjoys physical contact, and in fact thrives on touch.

I knocked on the door of the guest room and called out to our visitor. "Sorry to disturb you, my friend -- may we come in?"

Hearing a noise of affirmation, I opened the door, and Victor and I entered.

The effect on our visitor of Victor's presence was immediate. His whole expression brightened, and he stretched out his arms to Victor, making unformed noises which sounded to me a great deal like a child calling for its mother -- which is, of course, what they were.

Victor paused where he stood for a moment, shaking, before stepping forward to sit next to his son on the edge of the bed and putting his arms around him. "I'm sorry I left you," he said. "I shouldn't have run from you."

Our visitor -- our son, if I were to take on the role of parent at Victor's side -- put one massive arm around Victor's shoulders, and I saw Victor go tense, then force himself to relax.

Victor put up one trembling hand to touch the bruises on the side of our son's face. "Oh, what has happened to you?" he whispered. He pushed a lock of hair back behind our son's ear, and gently pulled his head down to kiss his forehead. "Oh, my son, I am so sorry."

I came to the bed and sat down opposite Victor on our son's other side.

"Victor," I said, "we ought to give him a name."

"We?" I heard him chuckle softly, even as he petted our son's hair. "Yes. I think I have just the name for you."

"It had better not be after one of your alchemists."

"No, it isn't. Jude," he said. " _We_ will call him Jude. It fits him."

"At least it isn't Cornelius," I said, and Victor laughed brightly. I smiled to hear it -- it was the first time I had heard him really laugh in the days I had been nursing him through his convalescence -- and, as Victor began to hum to himself, let myself lean against our son's broad back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this is unfinished, since when I left off I intended to continue, but for all intents and purposes it's done. If I add something to it, it'll be a short scene posted in a new chapter.
> 
> I sort of jacked one line in this fic from a Frankenstein adaptation, find it and win, um, knowledge?
> 
> Also the name is significant -- [St. Jude](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_the_Apostle) is the patron saint of lost or hopeless causes.


End file.
